Director of Production

POSITION SUMMARY:
Reporting to the General Manager, this position is focused on knowing and managing all production work occurring under Specialty Finishes control. This includes being involved in the extension of Specialty Finishes into relationships with customers for all coating and decking projects. The position entails production management for all work through existing superintendents and supervisors including tanks and voids, exterior decking, and interior decking. This position also requires the ability to identify business opportunities, create new relationships, maintain current relationships and determine which business opportunities have the most strategic value. It requires marketing skills with the specific goals of expanding market share, establishing a positive reputation, and increasing revenues.
1. Works with and directs existing production leadership to formulate and implement strategies for doing coatings and decking work. High degree of technical competence and past leadership involving protective coating work is a must.
2. Experience in team building, coaching, and mentoring those in the trade
3. Knowledge of targeted customer base. Able to communicate and work with known and prospective customers throughout the Pacific Northwest/other regional markets
4. Establishes and maintains effective customer relations through demonstrated work history, responsiveness to business needs, and project status; able to build strong working relationships with customers and vendors to assure cost effective pricing and services.
5. Resolves issues on a day-to-day basis with customers, owners, Port authorities, and other interested parties. Represents the Company fairly and consistently when interacting with customers.
6. Identifies and schedules key and critical path work items; communicates and tracks achievement of critical pay items.
7. Identifies and resolves ambiguities or inconsistencies in specifications or bid packages that could affect cost, prior to contract finalization.
8. Partners with estimating regarding customer’s scope of work; has a strong understanding of labor and material price estimates for required work; develops project summaries of itemized prices; helps in producing final bids incorporating costing and pricing for review.
9. Interprets specifications, plans project sequencing and coordinates the various phases of the project to prevent delays and avoid rework. Ensures that change order requests and CFRs are properly written by contract admin, and approves them before providing them to the customer.
10. Meets or exceeds customers' realistic expectations for quality, productivity and safety on projects, and manages the customer relationship through any changes in the scope and price of the project to assure continuing customer satisfaction and profitable project closure. Ensures that worker safety and environmental concerns are constantly monitored, and that problems are effectively resolved.
11. Works closely with the Finance & Estimating Departments to estimate, plan, execute and settle the projects. Provides all necessary documentation for bill settlement and negotiation of change orders in a timely manner.
12. Involves the appropriate SF team in a post mortem review of each completed project, and assures complete documentation and dissemination of all lessons learned in order to capture best practices and to avoid repeating mistakes. Ensures that lessons learned on own and other projects are captured in the preplanning phase of new projects.
13. Formulates strategies to enhance customer relations and direct efforts to designated markets; discusses customer feedback on bids to the General Manager and recommends costing changes.
14. Leads and assists in business development efforts to develop new customer relations
JOB SCOPE:
This position works independently following general guidelines and goals identified by the General Manager. The position has supervisory responsibility for all division superintendents. Has the ability to identify and propose changes to existing department procedures. The incumbent is expected to establish effective working relationships with those encountered in the course of the work and may be expected to effectively influence others. A strong background in and knowledge of the work for specific segments of preservation work (especially tanks and voids) is critical. Experience in estimating is also important to the overall business success.
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITY:
The position manages as many as one hundred (100) employees through subordinate superintendents. Those managed have varying degrees of technical expertise and reading/writing skills, including professional level and hourly craft. He/she will have four direct reports. The role operates with both senior oversight and some level of hands on supervision. However, the incumbent’s operational range must be able to reach from details to strategic levels.
INTERPERSONAL CONTACTS:
This position requires daily inbound and outbound communications with current and potential customers. These interactions are centered on the complexity of the scope of work to be done/being performed and require a skilled touch to make sure the outcome either guarantees the work will be assigned to Specialty Finishes or that it is completed in a way that encourages future business will be assigned. Shipyards, third party contract representatives, fishing fleet owners, transport and workboat firms are inclusive of the various external contacts that must be maintained and groomed to provide a steady amount of return work. Internal to the division, daily communication with the heads of operations and production for each division is essential for scheduling and managing the proper volume of work at the proper time. Equally crucial is involvement with accounting to make sure all elements of a project are accounted for and any additional help is extended. Work with the General Manager can be based around managing production leadership, project bid creation and review, and all outside (non-Vigor) sales efforts.
KNOWLEDGE SKILLS AND ABILITIES:
• Demonstrated financial savvy as it applies to labor-intensive projects.
• Knowledge of best practices for marine and/or industrial removals, preparation, and coating principles
• Strong knowledge of ship systems as relates to how they interact and construction/repair sequencing. Uses a systems approach to work planning and execution.
• Knowledge of project management principles and best practices.
• Demonstrated ability to orchestrate the use of labor in a multi-craf work environment.
• Strong leadership skills including conflict resolution, real-time decision-making, high performance expectations and the capability of inspiring the team to meet them.
• Strong customer relationship skills in terms of achieving customer satisfaction through their buy-in to business and project realities rather than through diluting project profitability.
• Effective communication skills that span the customer and project population. Skilled at acquiring knowledge through asking the right questions.
• Expertise in maximizing revenues and profits on projects through the art and science of ongoing negotiation.
• Strong entrepreneurial outlook with a clearly demonstrated sense of ownership over both the process and the results.
• Demonstrated hands-on approach to problem-solving and knowing the ship and the project.
• Capable of effectively handling multiple priorities on own with little or no supervisory guidance.
EDUCATION AND/OR EXPERIENCE:
High school diploma or GED equivalent is required. Prefer some college coursework in math and some exposure and knowledge of a production environment.
Minimum five years outside sales or cold-calling sales type experience in a production/manufacturing environment or maritime industry. Experience must have a demonstrated estimating component.
CERTIFICATES, LICENSES AND REGISTRATIONS: None required.
PHYSICAL DEMANDS: Work is conducted in a dynamic, fast-paced shipyard with moderate to loud noise levels from production activity in the shipyard. The individual will be required to be in production areas in yard and onboard ships. He/she must be able to walk to and from job sites. The person must be able to climb inclined stairways and vertical ladders; to enter confined areas and tanks; to work at heights. He/she may be required to work more than 8-hour shifts and weekend. The incumbent must be able to frequently bend, squat, crawl, twist and may be required to lift up to 50 pounds. There may be local travel and out-of-town travel (including air travel) up to 5% of the time with notice. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
WORK ENVIRONMENT: While in production areas will be exposed to all weather conditions, noise, dusts and odors. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Must have the ability to perform the essential job duties with or without reasonable accommodation and without posing a direct threat to safety or health of employee or others.
Vigor Industrial, and its wholly owned subsidiaries, practice Equal Opportunity Employment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, status as a qualified individual with a disability, a protected veteran, or any other protected status.